John Boyle

John Boyle...Noise Musician

"For me, the entertainment industry barely exists. Entertainment attempts
to take people away from the life experience, and my job as an artist is
to intensify the life experience for myself and for those people who care
to observe or accompany me. Similarly, performance interests me little.
It smacks of crowd control and manipulation of people. My music involves
a negation of craft as a means toward free exploration of sound. In order
to play my music one cannot possess conventional musical skill or knowledge.
In this sense it is truly nihilistic. My music is unrepeatable, except
by mechanical means, and is thus true to the nature of aural experience.
Things are heard once, just as moments are lived once. I prefer to make
or have made my instruments because, due to my lack of craftsmanship, my
instruments are unlikely to transport me or my audience into the realm
of conventional music."

Since 1965, John Boyle has been a member of THE NIHILIST SPASM BAND
of London, Ontario, playing electric kazoo, electric thumb piano and drums.
The NSB has recorded variously for Artscanada, Toronto, Allied Records,
Toronto, United Dairies, London, England, Chymic Productions, Montreal,
The Music Gallery, Toronto, and currently for Alchemy Records, Osaka, Japan.
For over 30 years, Boyle has toured with the NSB in Canada, playing such
venues as L'Obscure, Quebec, le Musee des Beaux Arts and Les Foufounes
Electriques, Montreal, The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, The Art
Gallery of Ontario, and such clubs as The Spadina, The Rivoli, and The
Cameron in Toronto, and on numerous university campuses. Today The Nihilist
Spasm Band plays every Monday night from 10:30p.m.-1:30a.m. at The Forest
City Gallery on Dundas Street East in London, Ontario, Canada. Internationally,
the NSB has played at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the
Galerie de France, Paris, a live concert on Radio France, and in London,
England at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. In March of 1996, Boyle
toured with the NSB in Japan, playing to sold out clubs and theatres in
Tokyo at Club La Mamma, in Osaka at the Myuse Theatre, and in Kyoto at
Club Takutaku, by way of launching the re-release on cd of the NSB's Allied,
United Dairies and Music Gallery lp's, along with their Artscanada flexidisc.
While in Japan, the NSB did prolonged interviews for several large circulation
magazines such as Music and Studio Voice, and made an appearance on the
popular musical variety television programme Tomori's World of Music with
a viewership in excess of 5 million. There was also a 3 hour Alchemy recording
studio session. Alchemy plans to release a Nililist Spasm Band Live in
Japan cd in early 1997. The Nihilist Spasm Band will play the international
Sound Symposium in Saint John's, Newfoundland, July 13-19, incl., 1996.

Boyle has played solo Kazoo at various locations in Canada and in Czechoslovakia
in Prague and Blansko, and has accompanied poet Dennis Tourbin at the Music
Gallery in Toronto, and at Odille Hellier's Village Book Store in Paris.
He has recorded the solo kazoo soundtrack of his art video Brucelosis,
1988, and contributed a solo kazoo selection for the Handstrument/Instrumains
double cassette box set of STAMP*AXE of poste 109, station "C", Montreal,
Canadada, H2L 4J9, 1990.

John Boyle...Writer

"As a writer,
I specialize in fauve-like humanist explorations into the phenomenon of
the peripherality of artistic expression in the neo-colonial culture. As
with my music, I am not interested in transporting my readers to an imaginary
world peopled by fleshed-in believable characters who reveal universal
truths through symbolism in the unfurling of an orderly and complete story.
I must also confess to a particular distaste for postmodern acolytes and
their parodically mimetic historiographic metafictions, and for the fascism
of political correctness. It is evidence of my own experience and perception
that I endeavour to excavate in my writing, with the hope of permitting
a glimpse into my existential space. In Canada I seek and am freely granted
the void of the margins for my literary explorations."

John Boyle has been writing fictional prose, essays, prose poems, political
diatribes, and novelesque texts since 1954. Many of these pieces have been
published in small Canadian literary journals over the years, including
Alphabet, Artscanada, is, Writing, 20 Cents, Twelve Mile Creek, Parachute,
Region, This Magazine, The Idler, Soundings, and Carot. In 1995 he published
his first novel, NO ANGEL CAME, The Tellem Press, Ottawa, 176 pages, ISBN
1-895286-02-6, $15.95, Can., distributed by Marginal Distribution, 277
George St. N., Unit 103, Peterborough, Ont., Canada K9J 2G9 phone/fax 1-705-745-2326,
E-Mail Address: marginal@oncomdis.on.ca.
No Angel Came was selected the "Editor's Choice" by Toronto's Globe and
Mail, and received reviews ranging from raves of brilliance to vilification,
usually on the grounds of political correctness. It has been declared an
underground "classic" by writer/poet David McFadden. Also available from
Marginal as above is JOHN B. BOYLE THE CANADOLOGY SERIES 1988-1993, The
Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery, 1994, $10.00, Can., ISBN 0-929021-12-6,
42 pages, 7 b&w, 17 colour reproductions of paintings, 16 texts by
John Boyle, one essay by Dr. Peter Denny. Boyle is currently working on
a second novel exploring the creative processes of the artist trapped within
the periphery

John Boyle...Fine Artist (Painter)

"I have been painting seriously since 1960, and full time and professionally
since 1968. Formal theory of stylistic innovation has held only marginal
interest for me. Nor have I been impressed with postmodernist transliteralists
who are concerned mainly with usurping the creative prerogative of the
artist. I am fascinated by invention, although I am not particularly good
at it myself. What I have to offer that is unique is my personal existential
experience, and my insights derived therefrom. The accident of birth has
placed me within a culture that has always been colonial and imitative
of its colonial masters, in recent centuries Britain, France, and now the
United States of America. Most people on earth live outside the great cultural
centres, and they contribute nothing by imitating trends in those centres.
By exploring the cultural imperatives of the meta-subculture of the periphery
by means of my own particular experience living in Southwestern Ontario,
Canada, surrounded by the largest freshwater seas in the world, and inundated
from birth in the effluvia, cultural and otherwise of the United States,
I hope to find truths comprehensible to people living anywhere.

John Boyle, canadologist

CANADOLOGY: RITE OF WINTER SOLSTICE

In winter, then as now, everything is black and white deep in the forest,
though the greys between can be every shade and hue. Each December twenty-first,
Canadians would celebrate the end of the season of colour and the beginning
of the season of black and white and myriad greys with the rite of winter
solstice. Singly they stole, by the light of the moon, naked, into the
depths of the forests to their birth tree, a tree selected at birth to
be theirs and theirs alone, repository of their spirit, giver of energy,
keeper of the secret. The exact nature of the rite is not known. Often
keepers of the rite did not emerge from the groves till dawn. There were
occasionally cases of mortality in severe weather, the supplicants found
bonded to their sacred tree. In later years the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police and the Secret Service made concerted efforts to stamp out the practice
with indifferent results.

CANADOLOGY: MIDSUMMER MADNESS

In high summer a strange malaise would seize the Canadian peasantry
and gentry alike. The bonds of family and affection would be apparently
retrograded by the heat, the humidity and, some say, the deconstructive
influence of the omnipresence of the colour green. People forsook the tranquillity
of domestic life and the security of industry, and took sometimes to the
fields but more often to the umbral forests where the ancient spirits of
the land dwelt. Imprecations were hurled, husband against wife, mother
against son, accusations levelled, family against family, neighbour against
neighbour. Fulminatory ululations were heard across the land. Weapons were
taken to hand, and battle was done. Women and children whirled in the grip
of bellicosity. Blows were struck, missiles thrown, wounds taken, death
threats spat.

But in nearly every instance reason was restored to some. Sons pacified
incensed fathers. Clubs were lifted in anger and chains were rattled like
sabres, but calm voices coaxed them into a grumbling silence. The police
were called, but nearly always arrived too late to inflame the situation.
There was a grudging division of property, an irreparable parting of the
ways. Then life resumed its uneventful and quiet normalcy. New liaisons
eventuated, and there was peace in the fields and forests.

All this happened in the season of the giant puffball mushroom.

CANADOLOGY: CHARNEL GROVE

The charnel rites of Canadians are shrouded in mystery. It is known
that the bodies of the dead lay in state where possible for a period of
three days, during which time there was nearly constant lamentation, interspersed
with some libation, and with liturgical incantations spoken by priests.
The deceased were then solemnly carried into a sanctified corner of the
forest, placed in sarcophaguses fortified against the ravages of worms,
and interred among the roots of the ancient grove. Over the graves were
placed intricately sculpted yet austere markers of stone, bronze or wood,
inscribed with the names of the dead, the dates of birth and death, a suitable
laudatory epitaph or poem, and often a symbolic image like a hand pointing
heavenward, reclining lambs, floral patterns, or hands clasped as in greeting
or parting. Rarely did anyone, according to the inscriptions on these monuments,
descend to Hell, though the predominant religions warned of a fiery Hell
of eternal torments for transgressors, leading us to believe that Canadians
rarely transgressed. Following the interment, an encomium was spoken over
the grave, and the stones and bronzes were left to rise and roll with the
push of forest growth until eventually they had to be sought out among
the underbrush along little used paths.

CANADOLOGY: THE ARK OF THE CONTINENT

Although there is no record of an established religion in the lost nation
of Canada, there were formal laws and tenets said to have been handed down
by a supernatural power in the south. These commandments were issued in
the mists of pre-history, but later written down and preserved in a great
floating ark in the shape of an elongated egg, which would penetrate the
ether at spasmodic intervals and apparently random locations throughout
the land as a constant reminder to the population that they lived under
the law and authority of the Ark of the Continent, so named, it is thought,
after the first law: the law of continence. This law of absolute chastity
was no doubt a contributing factor to the eventual disappearance of the
Canadian nation, though it is well documented that the law was flauted
by nearly everyone in daily life. Indeed the Canadians showed a propensity
for irrational, severe and unenforcible laws accompanied by an unhappy
determination to attempt their enforcement.

In the preamble to the tablets it was stated that all of the essential
currents in the land did and must flow from the north to the south, while
the Ark itself is known to have moved only from the south to the north.
And the people fled in terror before its dreaded shadow, to the east and
to the west.

CANADOLOGY: WITHDRAWAL SYNDROME

There came a time in the history of the People when they fell increasingly
under the sway of foreign powers to the point where they could no longer
take momentous decisions unto and of themselves, having first to ascertain
the attitude of the dominant lands. This circumstance came into being in
such a gradual and piecemeal fashion that large numbers of the population
were not even aware of their diminished potency, while those who were so
informed could not understand how this state had come to be. But all knew
they must not provoke the neighbouring lands to wrath, and all sensed that
the ways of doing this were becoming legion. So that while they had all
the trappings of government and could pass laws and decrees and orders-in-council
enough to cover all the paper that then existed, or could exist, and more,
and while they had police forces enough to see that the laws were obeyed,
they could direct these laws only toward citizens who owed their first
allegiance to their own land, and not to the foreign power, and towards
matters that were of internal consequence only. Now as nearly every property
and resource, nearly every industry and enterprise, nearly all of the service
sector, the means of communication, the art forms and delivery systems,
the great entertainment facilities, indeed nearly everything in the land
was in the hands of the foreigners, it was not a task easily undertaken
to identify and locate areas of jurisdiction. And as nearly all things
that were in fact or were perceived to be evil in the nation had arrived
from other shores unbidden, and as nearly all of the forces of division
and destruction that were or were perceived to be rending the People and
their institutions asunder were the result of the invasion of such forces
from abroad, it was difficult to frame laws and proscriptions that might
have purchase and effect. In fact, the only sector of society that remained
beyond the scope of the extraterritorial potentates, and therefor within
the grasp of the citizens interested in effecting change, was that of the
production of the object d'art. Thus, there arose a certain intellectual
puritanism accompanied by a kind of petty smugness that led to an Inquisitorial
pedantism in the cottage arts, wherein clutches of self proclaimed arbiters
of artistic integrity descended on every indigenous manifestation of creativity
to pronounce on the correctness of the intentions of the artist. The scorn
of their peers was usually enough to cow the miscreants. Ostracism was
the ultimate punishment, and few could bear total and permanent isolation
from the community. The result was an art that was either shamelessly imitative
of foreign and therefor untouchable forms of expression, or na vely, timorously
inward looking, a kind of scrupulous self examination without revelation.

CANADOLOGY: THE PATH LEADING TO THE RIVER

Periodically the women would rise up against the unhappiness of their
lot and would take "The Path Leading to the River". Thought to have originated
as a withdrawal rite among native populations for pubescent girls, "The
Path" evolved into a kind of "Coroboree" for women of all ages. As if at
a signal, at ten year intervals, on the third Sunday in the month of May,
all over the land, they would cease whatever activities in which they might
be engaged and go, some carrying small children, some in ceremonial dress,
some burdened with provisions, to the secret gathering places in the wilderness.
There they would spend a week in the company of their kind, at first railing
against the abuses and shortcomings of all men, and finally singing and
celebrating the wonders of womanhood, the joy of communion and the power
of the sorority. Ritual songs and dances varied from region to region,
but the general intent and format was common to all. Most accounts indicate
it was a happy time of liberation and empowerment. Their song would fly
among the rock faces, and clouds of rising birds would arc and surge in
harmony with the ebb and flow of the ceremonies. At the end of the week
they would return singly to their homes carrying with them their new knowledge
and strength.

CANADOLOGY: NYMPH, WESTERN BROOK POND

Scatalogical evidence thrown up by the continental drift and deposited
in the frigid depths of Western Brook Pond seems to corroborate folk references
to the presence of Wood and Water Nymphs in this region. Most Canadologists
agree that Nymphs of some type did in fact exist, and that they were perceived
by the local inhabitants to be demi-gods. How they lived and what function
they served is little understood. There are numerous instances where weary
travellers reported hearing nymph-song in the forests, and many claimed
that Nymphs could and did intervene supernaturally to save the lives of
unfortunate misadventurers, or to play harmless tricks on wayfaring campers
in the night. There are seamen's tales of blue and white lights playing
over the stone bluffs when seen from a great distance out to sea on a clear
night, thought to be cast by the campfires of the Nymphs. The tale of young
Harry Doyle, the first Newfoundlander, carried off by the Nymphs, is told
to this day. He is said to have married the queen of the Nymphs and begotten
the line that would become the present population of the region. There
have been no documented sightings of Nymphs at Western Brook Pond in recorded
history.

CANADOLOGY: PINK PUFFIN

The pink puffin was the national bird of Canada as it was found in all
parts of the country, and apparently nowhere else on earth. It was much
like the present day Atlantic puffin except that it was a bright vermilion
from beak to tail feathers, and it was huge in stature, standing as tall
as a man and weighing upwards of 100 kilograms at maturity. The pink puffin
was a cliff dweller and fed primarily on fish and small marine mammals,
which it would tear asunder with its powerful bill. While normally sedentary,
the pink puffin was a formidable fighter if intruders encroached on its
nesting territory. Legend had it that a party of fishermen seeking eggs
was attacked by a pair of irate puffins. The men were found in their dory,
apparently untouched except for gaping holes where their groins had been.
They had all bled to death in their flight. From that day on, it was said
that the puffins, still being advertised as the symbol of the Canadian
nation, had got their distinctive colour from eating human genitalia. A
concerted campaign of extermination was launched, and they were hunted
to extinction. So powerful was the love/hate relationship Canadians had
for the great pink birds, that when, many years after the last of the puffins
was thought to have been killed, a small colony was located on a remote
island, the people didn't hesitate to kill them all, making sure to save
only two specimens for the taxidermist. The pink puffin adorned the coat
of arms of ancient Canada, and its distinctive profile was imprinted on
the coin of the realm. A clutch of pink puffin eggs has recently been found
frozen in an ancient iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean and containing
spectacularly complete DNA material. We are very hopeful this find will
lead eventually to important discoveries in our efforts to replicate the
fauna of the Canadian period.

CANADOLOGY: SACRED SITES

Uniquely among ancient or contemporary peoples, Canadians believed that
the Earth or realworld existed somewhere outside of their own vast territory.
The land on which they lived was considered a tertiary slag heap of the
off-castings of Mother Earth, permitted to exist by the deities for an
unrevealed end or through oversight. The fate of the land was determined
by mysterious external forces. Dotting the landscape, generally considered
hostile and drab by the inhabitants, there were small numbers of topographical
features and formations of such evident magnificence and awesome power
that they were deemed to be erratic deposits from the true Earth, and therefor
linked to the divine forces of the universe. One site in particular, whose
exact location has not yet been identified, was believed to be the original
piece of the true Earth on which the first Canadians were transported from
the great mysterious centre of all things. All of these sites were revered
and respected by the People. No great temples were built. The holy places
were left in their natural state. People came to them singly or in small
groups from time to time, as the need arose, to ponder the enigmas of life,
and to contemplate the world as it must have been before it came to Canada.
Doubters believed these unusual land formations were merely the result
of long past seismic events of great force, that they were composed of
the same elements as made up the rest of the land, that their atypical
aspects suggested false imaginings to the discontented of a better world
that did not in fact exist.

CANADOLOGY: OKA, CANADIAN SIGNALS CORPS, CAMOUFLAGE Second Epistle

At a place called Oka, they made cheeses, and in nearby Chteauguay,
they made wines. Shards of wine bottles found at Chteauguay have been
carbon dated to the period, and at Oka, nearly two hundred rounds of various
cheeses have been found perfectly preserved in the shale. Canadians from
all walks of life trekked from all parts of the land to acquire these goods.
Foreigners came too, bringing tobacco and other exotic commodities to trade.
Oka and Chteauguay became centres of trade with a large number of permanent
residents and a thriving recreation industry for the visitors. The institution
of the restaurant is believed to have been invented here. Pictographs portray
structures that may have been either war machines used in sieges, or the
ancient equivalent of amusement park rides: water slides, roller coasters,
sporting centres, and the like. Although on the whole Canadians were a
pacific people, weapons found in the area, and skeletal remains showing
signs of violent physical trauma, do suggest that one or more great battles
took place on the site. It is a matter of conjecture that the fighting
may have been precipitated by the clash of cultures at this great crossroads
of international trade. For the most part, peace reigned at Oka, and as
is common on trade routes throughout history, many travellers sought not
only amusement, but spiritual enlightenment, and Oka became home over the
centuries to a number of important centres of religious study and proselytization.

CANADOLOGY: OKA, CANADIAN SIGNALS CORPS, CAMOUFLAGE Third Epistle

The townsite of Oka was a centre for cheesemaking, and the nearby site
of Chteauguay was the winemaking locus. Whole rounds of cheese, mostly
fine cheddars have been unearthed, perfectly preserved in the claybeds
by the river. Hundreds of metres beneath Chteauguay are layer upon layer
of smashed wine bottles in and around the ruins of ancient wineries. The
wines and cheeses were of the finest quality and were much prised by the
people who came from all over the country to partake of them. Traders voyaged
from abroad bringing exotic goods to exchange for the wine and cheese.
The area became a recreational centre. Pleasure palaces were built for
the rich. Life was a constant round of wine and cheese parties. Evidence
of intermittent military activity has been uncovered, and two battlefields
have been identified indicating, it has been postulated, that a foreign
invasion was repulsed at the confluence of the mighty rivers. Another theory
posits that force of arms was used against the indigenous inhabitants of
the area, suggesting that Canada may have been, for a time, a police state.
At this stage we are unable to make any causal connections between the
militarism and the wine and cheese making.

CANADOLOGY: RAMASSAGE DANS LES LAURENTIDES

...in a great cavern in the mountains excavated and refurbished so that
it was like the finest palace of the most powerful monarch in the land.
But there were no servants there, no guards, no acolytes, no company of
any kind, for she lived entirely unto herself on her mountain. And although
her body moved about in the chambers of the cavern or over the alpine meadows
gathering berries and wild flowers, her mind dwelt in a different place,
for she lived in a reverie of unreality. This place of her dreams was to
her thinking even more beautiful to behold than the mountain whereon she
lived, and this place, which she called Laurentia, was peopled only by
steadfast statuesque friends and wild creatures that came at her bidding.
There was no pestilence in Laurentia, no foul weather, no danger of catastrophe
or unpleasant news, no strife, no stress, no possibility of failure or
defeat, no fatigue, disappointment, grief, or death. In Laurentia she found
a man of such beauty and sensitivity that she wept for joy each time she
beheld him, and she loved him in body and in spirit, and when the time
came, he carried her child within him to spare her the discomfort, and
in due course a child of great beauty and intellect was born, who went
happily off with her father to nurture and grow and to return at a time
to her mother's liking. So life in Laurentia was bliss and happiness beyond
endurance, and she began to feel a craving for some serendipitous event
that might surprise her in a not too unpleasant way, that might give her
a taste of sadness or pain or grief or selflessness without closing the
door on her happy realm. No sooner had the thought taken shape in her head
than she came upon what appeared to be a fallen stag. She called to it
to rise, but it only swung its heavy head around, and she saw that its
throat had been slit, and thick blood trickled from the wound and congealed
in the matted fur. She screamed and stood back, for never before had she
beheld such cruel suffering in Laurentia. She wished the stag gone, but
it opened its guileless eyes to her and opened its mouth and spoke to her,
saying: Do not be afraid, for what I do is not an evil or unpleasant thing.
Come closer to me. Come without fear. Put your hand in my wound, and I
will show you a new world as great and beauteous as Laurentia. Come. You
need only look. And she stepped forward and knelt and slid her fingers
into the warm viscosity of the stag's throat. She felt no fear as she looked
into the limpid grey eyes of the dying animal, which began to shift and
swirl like clouds in a boiling sky until they were filled with the image
of another world. She felt no fear as she beheld a beautiful green mountain
top, and blue mountains receding into the distance like waves on the ocean,
and a vast cavern that gaped and revealed what seemed the home of a fairy
princess, and the princess herself, tall and comely and....

CANADOLOGY: SUBJECT GUIDE, TUG OF NOR

... for twenty full days and twenty full nights in weather foul and
fair, ill-clad, without food, and with only the water that fell on occasion
from the heavens to drink, and on the dawning of the twenty-first day she
awoke tremulous with cold and hunger and the fear of death, and beheld
a green mountain rising before her. Vast it was in girth and towering even
till it reached into the clouds, where the trees fell away, and there were
wisps of snow upon the summit, and she was filled with awe and wonder.
She fell upon her face and wept and uttered words of prayer, for she thought
she had come upon the dwelling of God. And her prayers took on a certain
cadence that caused her to swoon, and her head was filled with the utterings
of a voice that was not of the earth, and the voice spoke these words unto
her: Rise up. Rise up and return to your people. Stay with them where they
are for seven days and seven nights, and prepare them to do battle, for
they must be readied in body and in spirit and in mind. Their hands and
their backs must be strengthened, and their minds must be filled with all
of the wisdom that has been learned from the first morning of time. Their
wit must be tested and tempered in the fire, for their wit shall be their
weapon. Pit them one faction against another, neighbours against neighbours,
the old against the young, men against women, large against small, strong
against weak, in squares and in thin lines, wave upon wave, in headlong
assaults and in feinting skirmishes, in sieges and in jousts, both playfully
and in earnest, in mirthfulness and in anger, in plenty and in need, by
day and by night, until the time of preparation is at an end. Do all of
these things according to your own wit, for the people will try you sorely
with doubting and deceit and betrayal. When your wit fails you, reach into
the inner firmament, and there you will find the way, for you will have
need of wiles greater than your own. And when all of these things are done
and the people are ready and it is the morning of the eighth day, you must
bid them to rise and follow you to this place, where you will rest together
for one night. On the morning of the ninth day you must lead them up the
slopes of the mountain past all obstacles to the very summit, for it is
there that the battle will be joined. It is you the people to whom I speak.
It is you the people who on this mountain will rend yourselves asunder
and divide and do battle against yourselves. You will be both friend and
foe, both vanquisher and vanquished. Your two halves will be both joined
together and drawn apart by a heavy cord that can catch up or let fall,
that can ensnare or liberate, that can strangle or enfold. Your sages will
cast books of equal weight one against another seeking to crush wisdom
with wisdom. For seven days upon the mountain and seven nights also the
battle will rage until one half of the people has crushed the other, or
the other the first, or until the whole is destroyed, man for man, woman
for woman, child for child. And many times and oft during those days of
struggle the question will rise into the thin air: What is it that we accomplish
by this slaughter and degradation? What is it that we....

CANADOLOGY: PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINE

The Canadians believed that there existed a race of super beings or
gods that were vast beyond measure in all of their attributes. Their nature
and their magnificence were outside the powers of humans to contemplate
or comprehend. It was believed that one or more of these gods invented
a perpetual motion machine for the amusement of that god or those gods,
or perhaps as a plaything for a god child. The true purpose of this machine
surpassed human understanding.

The machine was pyrotechnic in nature. Its make-up and mechanics were
a great mystery to the people. Its age was indeterminate, and its duration
could not be foreseen. At a point in the cycle of its operation, the ingredients,
which were all and everything knowable, came together with great force
and exploded outward with unimaginable heat, energy and speed, and with
great displays of light and colour. During the course of this explosion,
all the matter contained within the device disintegrated and reformed in
configurations without number, and all events capable of existence occurred.
When in due course this cataclysm lost its force, all of the exploded parts
fell back in upon themselves with increasing velocity until they reached
a point of such centrality and density that the whole process repeated
itself, and another explosion of the greatest force occurred. Seers among
the people envisioned the night sky in the land of the gods filled with
the never ending explosions of divine fireworks, as if in celebration of
some great godly event, the nature of which humans could not productively
speculate upon.

Now as each machine contained precisely the requisite quantities of
all matter and space and energy to ensure the genesis of all possible events
during the course of an explosion, it was deduced that the earth and the
people had been formed in a tiny region within one such god-created machine
at a point when and where conditions permitted during the explosive phase,
and that the earth and the people would be destroyed during or before the
implosive phase, and that these events would inevitably be repeated at
intervals in the vastness of time. Creation to the Canadians was a never
ending process with infinite possibilities of form and direction, and human
consciousness was as sleepings and wakings without number and for time
indefinite.

Canadians believed that the god or god-child responsible for the machine,
or universe, was aware of and appreciated all of the phenomena generated
therein. They felt that no demands were placed upon them by their god except
to co-exist within the limits imposed on them by nature, and to seek to
understand and respect god through the study of the universe and all things
contained within it. They believed that over the course of eternity, or
so long as it pleased god to keep the machine in motion, all things would
be experienced by all people, and all things they were capable of understanding
would be made known.

The nature of life in any form, and human awareness in particular, was
also a mystery to the people. They believed that outside of the observable
manifestations of life within the boundaries of birth and death, there
was a cumulative aura of the species that hung in the atmosphere that enveloped
them. This aura existed independently from the people on the earth. Within
it resided the sum of human wisdom and experience from the past. It pulsed
and buzzed with the contributions of the stories of the newly dead in a
never-ending internal dialogue. This aura was most palpable at the dawn
of a new world and in the dying days of the universe. At these times, the
skies were filled with etherial spectres, and there was discourse between
the people and their aura. However, none of the resulting insights gave
the people to believe that they were in any way special or privileged in
the eyes of their god. They were equal before god to any other life form,
and even to inanimate objects and unseen forces. They were simply a part
of god's universe that satisfied some divine purpose in some small way.
In fact, most Canadians believed that there existed in an unknown location
a race who were god's chosen people, and who were superior to themselves
in every way.

CANADOLOGY: ARK OF THE CONTINENT, DECOY

Just as the People began to divine a method in the appearances and disappearances
of the Ark of the Continent, and were developing a science whereby they
could predict the arrival or departure of the Ark with an accuracy rating
within four percentage points, nine times out of ten, there appeared a
second Ark, much smaller than the first. This second Ark seemed to be totally
benign, but because, in the beginning, it was nearly impossible to distinguish
one Ark from the other at a distance, it had the same effect on the people
as the first. It was surmised that the powers in the south that sent the
first Ark had sent the second, perhaps with the purpose of confounding
the efforts of the people to minimize the effectiveness of the first in
controlling the population. This second Ark became known as the Decoy.
It was assumed that the Decoy carried out surveillance for the Ark and
that it reported back to the powers in the south, and therefor the People
modified their behaviour when they saw it in the skies. But because it
was benign, they were not afraid. On a fine day, they would bask in the
sun and warmth and watch the Decoy bob and dip on the air currents and
wonder at the things it beheld.